Crazy.

It wasn’t supposed to happen – that was my first thought when it did happen. Bile filled my esophagus, rose up my throat, and threatened to spill it’s way out, as I stood there in shock – still completely stunned, sickened by the cranium and skull that painted the walls and the white carpet.

And then I was puking up the secrets and sorrows held in my stomach, washing it down the sewage, scared of the underlying meaning; it had taken everything in me to walk back out into the living room of the penthouse, my heart stuck in my throat, glued to my throat.

The stench made it’s way around the room, suffocating me, threatening to watch me
choke and sputter, until I sunk to the ground, and was restricted of all air for good. Just like he was. My gaze flew to him again, and the revolver next to him. I felt the bile rise up a second time; acid burning, stomach twisting, knotting; my mind clouding with what I’d done.

And then he found me in the penthouse, sitting there, bile surrounding me, the ruby red mess staining the walls, him lying on the floor, eyes open in complete shock, the fire burned out inside his pupils, instead of holding life and happiness.

“W-What the fuck?” spilled from his mouth, as he dry heaved from the stench. I just continued to stare at the lifeless corpse, rocking back and forth, not saying a word, as he ran to the bathroom and retched.

When he came back out, he pulled me up from the floor, turning me around to face him. I flicked my eyes through the whole penthouse nervously, sickly, as he shook me. “What. Did. You. Do?” his harsh words echoed around the room, screaming for me to tell him why there was a fucking dead body lying just ten feet from us, his eyes almost innocently lifeless.

Lifeless. Dead. Dead body. Gone.

Nothing fell from my dry lips as I flickered my eyes from him to the corpse on the ground nervously. My heart pounded a million miles a minute.

“Jeph – Jeph, what did you do?” He asked me frantically, eyes flitting around the room in search for something. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but, he was looking for something. Finally, he ran over to the counter and grabbed it, before staring at the revolver that laid next to the decaying corpse. He winced as he grabbed it, before he grabbed my arm and pulled me up. He looked up at me.

The air around me felt suddenly thick, heavy, and dry, like I’d never get enough. “Have you lost it?!” he bellowed; his grip on my arm tightening. I whimpered. “Are you fucking crazy?”

Crazycrazycrazycrazy.

My eyes flickered up to meet him, and I bit the inside of my cheek nervously. The truth was, I remembered none of it. All I remembered was staring down at him, and then seeing the ruby red paint, sparkling in the sunlight, and running to the toilet.

And then he was there, pulling me out of the apartment.

Crazy.

He lit the match he held between his artistic, nimble fingers assuredly – unlike any of my body, or mind, and threw it through the door before lighting another one. One more after that, and then the fire was blazing, and the alarms were going off.

“Fire exit,” he instructed me stiffly, leading me to the window.

Crazy.

Once we were in the car and well on our way back to the apartment, I looked up at him and spoke for the first time that day. “W-what do we do?” He looked over his eyes giving me blank stare, pulled a cigarette out. In one blink of my eye, it was dangling precariously from his dusty pink lips.

“We pretend we never even knew him,” he told me. “Ever.”

Crazy.